Face
by WhiskeyTangoFoxtrot
Summary: One-shot. Complete. For the Reviews Lounge Fanon Fact Challenge. What if she wasn't the pretty, promiscuous girl everyone thought her to be? Lavender Brown looks at her face after the battle of Hogwarts. She was so forgettable before... What is she now?


**A new perspective about Lavender Brown—**

**What if she was never the pretty girl that we had thought her to be?**

**What if she was a plain girl before?**

**What if she only ever kissed one boy?**

**What is she now? How can she find herself after Greyback's attack?**

**I own nothing. Rated T for language and some graphic imagery. Thanks to stella8h8chang for the beta.**

* * *

**Face**

The halls of St. Mungo's are white and sterile.

_Well, why wouldn't they be?_

_It _is _a hospital, after all._

Lavender Brown laughs without humor or soul. It sounds so different from her laugh from her days at school, when all she knew were unicorns and star charts and Parvati's most recent gossip about broom closets and boys.

Lavender walks through the halls, through the corridors of the building. Every so often, a sharp odor -- the tang of cleaners and potions -- enters her nose, the half not currently bandaged, and then she counts the number of days that she's been here . . .

At first unconscious.

Then awake.

Then moving.

And finally walking.

Even though, when she walks now, she limps.

The pain that lives in the side Greyback shredded has dulled considerably.

It hurts far less than it used to. It used to feel as if she were being stabbed by white-hot metal.

Now, _that_ half of her body feels simply . . . uncomfortable.

She can feel every pin and every screw holding her knee and muscles in place. She can feel the Healers' mending spells repairing the ligaments that had previously been attached to her elbows and her shoulders.

They say that the work to mend will take days, maybe weeks. They did as much as they could do after the battle; they saved as much blood and broken skin and tissue in the Great Hall as they were able.

But the damage to her body was still so great.

The Pain-Abate Solution Healer Waddescombe applied just over half-an-hour ago finally takes effect. As she walks, Lavender feels the sting ebb like a low tide.

But, she knows that, in a few hours, the solution will wear off, and her leg and her side and her arm will still hurt.

And her face . . .

_They all say I should be grateful to still be alive._

Lavender knows exactly where she is going. She shuffles down the hall . . . past the room with the wizard whose leg has just been amputated. She remembers hearing some mention of over-zealous use of the Cruciatus Curse.

She pushes herself down the white floor, next to the room where a Healer is attaching a boy's tongue back into his mouth.

"You'll be able to say whatever's on your mind now, Tommy," the Healer says. "There'll be no more Severing Spells if you say something bad about Minister Shacklebolt. . . . Not like before, with Thicknesse in charge—"

Her heart skips a beat.

She continues further down the hall.

And further down.

And she stops.

She stands in front of a long, gold-framed mirror that hangs at the end of this particular corridor.

It's the only one that she's found in St. Mungo's that says nothing back to her.

She wonders if it's because this floor, the Fourth Floor, and this particular ward, treats those with more severe physical damage.

Like missing body parts.

Like disfigurement.

Lavender is being treated on the First Floor, in the _Dai Llewellyn Ward for Serious Bites_. But all the mirrors on that floor talk and give her the most inane, pointless advice.

Things like, "_Oh_ . . . _you should definitely watch out for _that_ monster next time dear!_"

And each mirror huffs in indignation every time Lavender tells them to shut up.

But this mirror, Lavender cherishes. This mirror, Lavender loves.

It doesn't try to tell her everything'll be all right.

It doesn't try to tell her the Healers can fix _anything_.

Instead, all she sees is her right eye, looking at her reflection. And she hears nothing.

It's so quiet, that all she hears at this moment is her own thoughts.

_I'm ruined._

It's honest. It's real.

For Lavender, it's perfect.

She studies her face, or at least the half that's visible.

She sees exactly how she looked before. She looks at her pale skin, the thin dusting of freckles from her nose across her cheek, her pale eyebrows and lashes, and her blue eyes. She has a couple of moles here and there, one on her cheek, and the other on her jaw.

She is pale. Everything on her seems so small.

She thinks back to when she was at school. She tries to imagine how others would have described her.

_Well, she's . . . _

_Lavender's got blonde hair, blue eyes, and . . . _

_And . . . _

She stops. She swallows. She sees the water pooling in her right eye.

She can only describe her face, back then, in ellipses, spaces and pauses.

_Utterly forgettable._

Lavender wipes at her eyes and sniffs. She wonders if she was always so nondescript, if she allowed herself to blend in too much. Even after going with Seamus to the Yule Ball. Even after Ron Weasley.

Even after things didn't go anywhere with either boy.

Because it is quiet, Lavender can hear herself thinking again.

_ Even if my first kiss was Ron . . . _

_Even if I haven't kissed another boy since . . . _

Lavender sighs.

_I doubt they'll be queuing up for a snog now._

Lavender continues to think.

She has Parvati. Lavender smiles.

She has always had Parvati.

Parvati always tried to make her prettier, more appealing to boys.

Parvati comes to St Mungo's every day to visit her, to make sure she's okay.

But Parvati has stopped trying to make Lavender pretty now.

Lavender laughs sadly.

_I guess I'm a lost cause._

With a sigh, Lavender does what Lavender always does. She reaches up with her good arm, and, with her healthy hand, she peels away the thick pile of bandages covering the entire left side of her face.

Her skin here is various shades of red and purple, even black. Her lips on the left side of her mouth are gone now, replaced by nothing but new skin, pulled just so to conceal her teeth. Her cheek explodes with colors both bright and grotesque. There were times when she looked at her cheek and thought things were rotting away; it was the mere clotting of her blood, mixing with the contamination that Greyback wrought upon her physique. The blackness is mellow now, less than before, less than even three days ago, the last time she stood here.

_I think it's healing._

Lavender turns her face so she can see the skin around her left eye more, but _skin_ is a rather inaccurate term for this particular area.

She remembers the first time she saw her left eye. She had been in St. Mungo's for a few days, after she had regained consciousness. She remembers that she had sat in silence, shocked and transfixed by the exposed muscles, watching them move as she had blinked . . . and then as she had yelled in pain.

She remembers that she never followed the Healers' advice — to keep the bandages on — and instead she had stared at her left eye for days and days, using a magical mirror that she had threatened to break unless it shut up.

"_But dear,_" the mirror had said pleadingly, "_that's seven year's bad luck!_"

"You think with _this _face I'm worried about that?"

Now, Lavender looks closely. Her skin is slowly healing, rebuilding itself from her hairline to her eye. It's raw and red and vulnerable, like a premature baby — weak, but alive and struggling for strength and survival.

Lavender takes one step back, bringing up her hand to gently touch the patch of skin.

It stings. She winces.

She smiles, but only out of the right side of her mouth, as her left side remains flat.

Lavender lets her hand fall back to her hip. She allows herself a long look at both halves of her face.

Her right. Her old face. So smooth and pale and normal.

Her left. Her new face. War has ripped it apart, but life has somehow put it back together again.

It is imperfect. It is messy.

It is ugly, almost repulsive.

But Lavender, unbelievably, continues to smile.

It is a face that has been through the unspeakable. It is a face that has seen life and death.

It is a face that, someday, time will heal.

And, more than anything else, it is a face that no one will ever forget.


End file.
